


Now That We Have Tasted Hope

by VagabondDawn



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Gen, Kunoichi Club, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 04:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18865321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VagabondDawn/pseuds/VagabondDawn
Summary: Tsunade and the kunoichi of Konoha





	Now That We Have Tasted Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JohnBurtonLee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnBurtonLee/gifts).



> Request by JohnBurtonLee
> 
> Group: Kunoichi Club
> 
> Looking for something Kunoichi Club focused, preferably Anko formalizing things or the POV of younger club members as they get added. Either way, something beyond when it was just a group of Shikako's friends her age.

It’s Shizune packing up her workstation that draws Tsunade out of her almost-trance-like state, that pulls her attention away from the medical records that she’s carefully annotating. They’ve both spent the morning at the hospital — a returning Rescue and Retrieval squad had brought in a patient in dire need of emergency surgery — but it’s still an hour before Shizune usually goes to lunch. 

“Meeting someone?” Tsunade asks, casually. There’s no reason Shizune _shouldn’t_ go to lunch early, of course, only that she never does. 

“It’s time for the Kunoichi Club meeting, Tsunade-sama,” Shizune says, always respectful, as she lifts Tonton into her arms. 

Tsunade eyes her critically, leaning back in her seat and stretching. Her back doesn't _crack_ — no ninja worth their salt would let their muscles fatigue simply sitting at a desk — but the motion relieves stress all the same. 

“Hm,” she says, thoughtfully. 

Shizune looks… happier. It’s hard to tell, really, because Shizune has never been one to complain. She’d followed Tsunade from gambling den to casino hall for years with, if not total contentment, then at least _peace._ Oh, she’d disapproved of the drinking and gambling but she had never once expressed a wish to leave, to return here, to stop travelling or to do anything different. 

But all the same, she looks happier now. Like settling down and reconnecting, planting roots back in the soil that calls to them both has done her good. Or maybe it’s not the place — maybe it’s just having more people than Tsunade to talk to each day. 

“I’ll come with you,” Tsunade says, decisively. She flicks the patients chart closed, adds it to the stack for the hospital administrators and stands. 

She hasn’t precisely been _invited_ to the Kunoichi Club, but Tsunade hasn’t let ‘not been invited’ stop her from the first day she waltzed into the Konoha Academy — five years old and bratty, not knowing the kind of life she was signing up for; just that the boys were allowed and she _wasn’t_. 

“Oh, yes, Tsunade-sama,” Shizune says. Like she’s happy to share, not like her shishou is crowding her or intruding into spaces she’s trying to carve for herself. “They’ll be thrilled!” 

Invitation or not — it’s not like they’d ever deny her entrance. 

Tsunade is familiar with the location of the clubhouse — she’d authorised its use, after all. There are dozens of the damn things scattered through Konoha, buildings and training halls and meeting halls, many of them abandoned for lack of use or having never even been used at all, just created for some unspecified future purpose that never arrived — but it’s Shizune that walks through the doors with familiarity and confidence. 

“Tsunade-sama!” Anko Mitarashi says, not quite able to cover her surprise at seeing them both in time. “Uh, welcome!” 

Tsunade had known Anko when she was small and bright, before Orochimaru had tormented and discarded her, and she still sees traces of that girl sometimes, in the shine in her eyes and the awe she can’t quite cover — like Tsunade is something special and wonderful, an idol with no feet of clay — when she of all people should know better. When she of all people was failed the most. 

Tsunade feels _so old_ , sometimes. She can count the number of kunoichi in her generation on the fingers of one hand and have ones to spare but this whole room is filled with bright young women who look at her like she lit the way for them, is still lighting the way for them. 

_Don’t follow_ , she wants to say, sometimes. _Nothing good lies this way._

But there’s steel in them all, too, hard won and hard forged and she doesn’t think any of them will turn back. 

But maybe, if the world is good and they’re lucky and all the stars align… they won’t break like she did, either. 

“I hope I’m not late,” she says, as mildly as she can. She can never set aside the mantle of Hokage, as much as she can never set aside the mantle of Tsunade Senju either, and just be _one of them_ , but she isn’t here to _be_ the Hokage. 

“I think I can forgive you,” Anko says, grinning so wide her eyes squint closed. “Come and see what we’ve done.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Having dreamed the same dream,  
> Having found the water behind a thousand mirages,  
> Why would we hide from the sun again  
> Or fear the night sky after we’ve reached the ends of  
> darkness,  
> Live in death again after all the life our dead have given us?  
> -Now That We Have Tasted Hope by Khaled Mattawa


End file.
